employed in support of a real fact." The resemblance to Droeshout's print might not be thought evidence enough to prove the picture Shakpeare's, unless his name were written on the back, in imitation of the penmanship of the maiden reign-they therefore determined to "bring a corollary, rather than want a spirit;" and in this attempt "to make assurance double sure," the putters forth of this adventure, risked the destruction of the whole enterprise. At Shakespeare, no one would have started; for who expected a Flemish painter to turn orthographer? But we could not repress our wonder to find the modern innovation adopted in the year 1597. For though the treacherous tapster Thomas To leave the good old SHAKE-SPEARE Inn. With this suspicious docket upon the portrait, let us examine whether it could ever be Droeshout's original. The forehead is not only different in character, but the ablest artists have assured me, that Nature never produced one of such a form, and that the boundary of the skull is shamefully inaccurate: it is a very narrow egg in its shape, and if the whole were made out, the skull would want the occipital portion-so that it would be shallow in one sense, however its prodigious frontal pile might seem to claim for its possessor, powers more than could be rounded in heads of the usual proportions. The nose is very different indeed from that exhibited by the engraver. Droeshout has given, like the Monument and the Chandos picture, a nose of a truly English character, rather delicate than large, and round at its termination. The picture exhibits this feature somewhat flattened, and squaring into the form of the lozenge or diamond. The mouth is feebler in the picture than the print, and the beard thinner and poorer-more faint and evanescent. But the great difference regards the eyes; which in the picture, and in Trotter's engravings from it, have a painful obliquity, which the print disclaims; the latter too displaying the arched bent of brow so admired in that age, while the picture draws it as a horizontal line over the left eye, with little advantage to the expression of the face. Indeed, it is in this article of expression generally, that I consider the print so superior to this picture. Where, in the latter, do we find any thing beyond a placid insipidity, a poverty of intelligence, and, at most, a barren indifference? But the print has great comprehension, and tender thought—a smile, rising to render the pensive enchanting, and an indication of both the will and the power to do great things. To descend to more trifling matters. Mr. Steevens could not fail to observe, that what was to pass in the picture for a ruff, is the imitation of no substance that ever was worn, in no fashion that ever was invented. It is an obvious interpolation, after a glance at the print, by one who was no artist, and is like nothing but a small portable pillory about the neck; a board, instead of muslin or cambric, scored across, without even understanding the meaning of the points which cross the duplex compartments of the ruff in the engraving. Droeshout's is a part of dress, whose bend follows the figure in its K set that of the picture has no reference to any neck or chest; it is not a band, it is no ruff; it is, as I have said of it, a disgraceful appendage, and defying a parallel in the art of design. Here, therefore, Mr. Steevens had much to do: and he did here, what he ever did upon similar occasions; he tried the force of his ridicule against obvious propriety. The incurvation of Droeshout's ruff he thus tries to reprobate: "From its pointed corners, resembling the wings of a bat, which are constant indications of mischievous agency, the engraver's ruff would have accorded better with the pursuits of his necromantic countryman, the celebrated Doctor Faustus." And this ill-placed derision excited a smile from grave considerate men, and blinded them from the discernment of one mark of imposition. He moreover told us that, when Marshall engraved from this picture, he made the line of the ruff straight, as it is in the picture. I have Marshall's print before me, and most certainly this assertion is not true. The line is curved, though not so boldly as Droeshout's; for this reason too, that such a curve would not have suited the new habiliments in which he clothed the poet. But he imitated the texture of Droeshout, together with the radial points crossing the inner division of it; it is ample too in its sweep, and not stubborn and narrow, like the wretched appendage to the picture. "Marshall too," says Mr. Steevens, "when he engraved it, reversed the figure." To be sure he did; and did he never ask himself, how it happened that Droeshout, on his hypothesis, did not do the same thing? Yes, the picture, and an engraving pretended to be taken from it in 1623, absolutely LOOK THE SAME WAY; though, even as late as Houbraken's, all the heads were reversed by the engraver, as a common practice. But how did it happen that Marshall, who was a superior engraver, yet did not produce a more accurate likeness from the pičture, if he copied it?-He could not be suspected of similar volunteer infidelities with those by the Dutchman. He would have exhibited the conical forehead, the straight eye-brow, the flattened nose, the thin beard of the picture, one would think. Nothing like it. Marshall saw no picture: Droeshout was his original; only that, having reduced it as to size, he was unable, with all his skill, to give à tithe of the expression communicated in the folio by the "mischievous agency" of the Dutchman. What then, I may be asked, do you think of the picture in question? Is it entirely painted from the print? Certainly not; a painter of skill would have seen the fine points of the expression, and preserved all that the print conveyed, if he did not even improve them. My opinion is this-people had long been seeking for pictures of Shakspeare. Every thing was, during my youth, warranted HIM, that had a high forehead, little or no hair, and the slightest look of the known prints of him. I conceive then, that, at last, some fragment of an early portrait did occur, with more than usual resemblance as to the position of the head, and the costume of the hair. I suppose that this was improved into still closer resemblance; that the ruff was daubed on in the mutilated state of the picture, and the name placed on the back of it in the hand-writing of Elizabeth's reign, and in the modish orthography. A very short time after the appear ance of this picture, it was proved, as to our poet's writings, that BATS had indeed been abroad; and Mr. Steevens became aware of their "mischievous agency." Yet he yielded to the portrait, what he denied to writings under the hand and seal of Shakspeare, and laboured to produce a conviction in others, that the Felton head was genuine, and the only authentic portrait of our great bard. He did more; he inferred, that all who subscribed to Trotter's engraving from it, were sincere believers; a matter to which I myself can give a decided negative-MANY subscribed, who only wished it genuine. Mr. Boswell, in the advertisement to Mr. Malone's Shakspeare, edition 1821, has the following singular elucidation, as to one subscriber: "My venerable friend, the late Mr. Bindley of the Stampoffice, was reluctantly persuaded, by his importunity, to attest his opinion in favour of this picture, which he did in deference to the judgment of one so well acquainted with Shakspeare; but happening to glance his eye upon Mr. Steevens's face, he instantly perceived, by the triumph depicted in the peculiar expression of his countenance, that he had been deceived." Mr. Boswell has something still stronger, as to the portrait in question. It is both mysterious and Thus he writes at page 27 distressing to the admirers of Steevens. of the advertisement: "There are not, indeed, wanting, those who suspect that Mr. Steevens was better acquainted with the history of its manufacture, and that there was a deeper meaning in his words, when he tells us, 'he was instrumental in procuring it,' than he would have wished to be generally understood; and that the fabricator |